March 8th, 2007

Today's build has an awful lot of balance changes across the board, and some fundamental core mechanics have changes as well to go along with that.

1) Overall balance - weapon damages, monster damage, monster health, spell damage, etc. have all been MASSIVELY changed. They all increase at a faster rate. This means that often difficulty can increase at a faster rate from level to level - but if you upgrade your skills and gear, you should be able to keep pace fine. This should make higher-level dungeons harder overall for lower level players.

2) Missing- as a player, you don't 'miss' anymore. Instead, you 'fumble'. You still hit, but for 5% of regular damage. This just feels better. Nobody likes to miss. You'll hear sort of a 'thunk' sound, and a blue flash instead of a red one on strike. Improving dexterity and attack rating reduceseyour chance to fumble, just as it reduced chance to miss before. Monsters still miss, however.

3) Stamina - stamina now only drains when you are interrupted, or during skill use/attacks. This means that for a while, you really won't notice stamina much - UNLESS you try to run through an out-of-range dungeon. Then, the rate of interrupts from monsters will be much higher, and your stamina will drain much faster

4) Death Penalty - Hey, there IS one now! It's called Misfortune. When you die, you are inflicted with Misfortune, which reduces your chance to find loot for 5 minutes. If the difficulty of the level you are on is within 3-5 levels of your current level, this'll only be a 5% reduction - almost unnoticeable. But, it stacks. So if you die 5 times in a row, that's a 25% reduction. If you are hitting an out-of-range dungeon, the Misfortune malady will be MUCH MUCH higher. 25, 50, or 100 percent! So it becomes much more difficult to farm a higher-level dungeon for loot. Unless you've got enough time on your hands to sit out the 5 minute penalty every time you die.

5) XP scaling - Monsters within 5 levels of you give you 100% XP - but after that, the XP you gain is reduced to 5% over the course of a 5 level span. At 10 levels difference, you'll only get 5% of the XP ( this also applies to monsters lower level than you ). This should curb some of the level rushing

6) There's an attempted fix for the 'slow chat' issue. Please let us know if you see it again!

7) There are a couple of new quests. Mostly low level stuff, but we will start spreading this out over higher levels now.

8) Potions drop more, and there are some starting equipment changes for classes

9) Your starting Class quest will give you a weapon reward.

10) Acadia temple is now only 3 levels deep

11 ) Monsters should no longer ignore your ranged shots in certain situations! They won't feel as dumb generally.

12) You shouldn't see monsters 'wake up' as much anymore - where they sit for several seconds and suddenly aggro

13) All ranged weapons are slower. Arrows are now sometimes dodgeable, and will miss properly. The same is true of rifle and pistol shots. Less monsters will have bows.

14) Some irritating UI issues fixed ( character sheet overlaying Stash, for instance ). Opening your inventory closes the 'new map' tip. ( Bear with me, I'm going to add a more robust 'tip' system, and the whole irritating 'new map' thing will go away.

15) Several graphical fixes for the Gremlin male

16) You shouldn't find dead monsters 'standing' anymore. They should always look dead!

17) Monsters flee a little less, making for some reduced frustration in melee situations

18) A lot of restructuring to the Class trees. Certain skills are available earlier or later, and the level requirements for them are all drastically changed and stretched out to about level 32. Minotaur Stomp, for instance, is available to the Bloodletter right away

19) Bloodlings shouldn't die almost immediately on summon

20) Boss monsters have a red glow around them to make them a little more distinct ( special boss spells are coming! I swear. )

21) Several pricing changes for items across the board.

22) Little balance, and item drop changes all over the place. Hopefully it just feels nicer overall.

23 ) Buffs/Maladies - mousing over your buffs and maladies in the top right actually tells you what they are. More detail and data in these descriptions is coming.

24) Higher level Bloodletter skills Crimson Mark and Explode Bloodling now actually work.

25) You get an extra Mana point per level automatically. Mana also now regenerates on a more percentage-based scale - so the more Mana you have, the faster it regens. the Embers skill also gives you a MUCH higher rate of return on your investment - 30% up to a maximum of 120% increase

26) little things I am forgetting.